The shortened days of late fall are near their shortest by the time All Hallows Eve or “Halloween” comes around. Nevertheless, it is during this time that almost the entire population of children in the United States is put at risk on a single evening by reason of the ritual of “trick or treating” during the eve of All Hallows. On this evening, children wander from door-to-door, and house-to-house, dancing across streets and through streets at a time when there is a relatively large amount of traffic on account of such events and people driving back to their homes after working all day, and driving off to the grocery store to buy something for their evening meals. In addition, the poor lighting conditions increase the likelihood of a common accident, such as tripping and falling.
The high concentration of children on the road, during such a busy part of the day presents a higher likelihood that children will be struck by unwary drivers. Indeed, not only is traffic quite high during the early evening, but this time of day is after many people have put in a hard full day of work and are more prone than they might be at other times to speeding, not paying attention, or simply fatigued and not at their best in reacting to dangerous situations. Anything which would promote the likelihood of a child being seen before it is too late to avoid an accident would be of real value.
One way of avoiding accidents is simply to use clothing which is visible, such as clothing which is bright in color. For example, policemen often wear vests in fluorescent orange, or the like. People are encouraged not to wear black clothing at night, when they are walking the dog, taking a stroll or the like.
Evolving from homemade get-ups that reach back into our earliest history, commercially available Halloween costumes have been commonplace during the past half-century. The use of lights with children's Halloween costumes, as is proposed in accordance with the present invention, is believed to be a natural and reliably implemented solution to the problem of increasing the visibility of children on Halloween night. Nevertheless, it appears that the same is largely nonexistent in any form, despite the strong need for such a valuable system.
Clothing with light displaying members is, of course, well known and will improve the likelihood that a child will not be injured on Halloween night. Perhaps the most common expedient in this area is the use of retroreflecting materials, such as tape incorporating retroreflective beads. Retroreflection can also be promoted through the use of molded plastic members with flat interfaces and faceted backs, which promote total internal reflection of incoming light in a direction diametrically opposed to the direction of the incident light. The result is to produce a strong reflection in a direction aimed at the source of incident light. For example, if the light falling on a retroreflective device originated from the headlights of an automobile, light will be reflected in a column generally aimed at the source automobile headlight, and this will generally be broad enough to include a substantial amount of reflected light reflected toward the eyes of the driver.
However, being merely reflective, retroreflective members will not work where lights are not being used, as in the case of a negligent driver, or the driver of a vehicle such as a bicycle, or the like. Moreover, motorcycles may not be effective to illuminate retroreflective members on children, because of the relatively poor nature of their road illumination systems. Even cars may not do a good job in this area if headlights are out of alignment or burned-out.
In response to the inadequacies of reflective members, light-emitting systems have evolved. See, for example, U.S. Pat. No. 5,649,755 to Rapisarda, which discloses wearing apparel incorporating a flexible light-transmitting assembly comprising a clear flexible polymer tape with a plurality of tooth shaped protrusions which provide reflecting points of light. However, such tape is relatively cumbersome and unsightly from an aesthetic standpoint. While a tape can be made more aesthetically acceptable by using it in a symmetrical fashion, for example as a pair of stripes on the arms of a person's jacket, as illustrated in Rapisarda, the end result is far from pleasing and will have an adverse impact on a highly decorated article of clothing such as a Halloween costume. While it has been suggested that flashing electrical light sources including light-emitting diodes can be applied to children's Halloween costumes to significantly enhance safety on Halloween evening, at least one device proposed, a flashing box-like device illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 5,149,190 of McKenzie, also fails to present a cost effective, aesthetic solution.
In addition, such lighting does substantially nothing to illuminate possible dangerous conditions on the road or sidewalk, such as stones, ruts and the like.
Over the years, parents have handed their children flashlights to carry with them when trick-or-treating. The children look at these flashlights and think it makes them look like geeks, try to hide them or lose them as soon as the opportunity arises.